Eight for Equity! New Year's Roundup

Here’s your latest Eight for Equity! Post—a roundup of eight of our favorite videos, articles, tools, and resources for advancing educational equity. You’ll notice that we’re ending 2017 with a theme of equity language and equity designing. In 2018, I’m committing to being more attentive to the language I use when I discuss educational equity and to use design thinking as a tool for imagining the future of education; will you join me?

Eight for Equity! New Year's Roundup

Creative Reaction Lab: What is Equity-Centered Community Design?Design thinking has been in the education game for a while. You’ve probably heard of organization like 2Revolutions, IDEO, and the Stanford D.School. So where do design thinking and equity intersect? Check out this resource from Creative Reaction Lab to learn how to build community input into the design process.

Critical Multicultural Pavillion at EdChange: Exploring Language: Definitions Activity. This activity should be part of every back-to-school professional development! From EdChange, this awareness activity asks participants to identify five definitions—for prejudice, discrimination, racism, sexism, and homophobia—from two sources: (1) his/her understanding and (2) a scholarly source. This activity puts the participants in control of their own learning as to how each of these words can have the same academic definition, but the experiences of the words differ vastly among different people.

Cultural Organizing: The Problem with that Equity vs. Equality Graphic You’re Using. You’ve seen it, right? The image of the three kids of different heights stuck behind the fence at the baseball game? The “equity solution” in the image is to stack boxes for the shorter students to be able to see above the fence. But the question is, “Is this really equity?” Be sure to check out this article chocked full of images to help discern equality from equity, justice, and liberation.

Design for Equity: Glossary. Diversity, Equality, Equity, Privilege, Power. Academic definitions of equity-related terms are important, but they can’t always tell the whole story. If you’re looking for experience-minded explanations of diversity, equality, equity, privilege, and power, look no further. This is a great brief, easy-to-read resource to build up your vocabulary!

Enterprise: Design for Racial Equity (Recording). This webinar adopts the perspective that racial equity begins in our communities. Featuring practitioners from the field, this webinar address the successes and challneges designers have faced in their efforts to advance racial equity through design. The best feature: hold out for the section where practitioners share “highly replicable approaches” to inform your work!

Inside Higher Ed: Language of Appeasement. Do you work in a school or organization with a commitment to “increasing diversity”? Have you ever wondered if increasing diversity is enough? From Inside Higher Ed, this article critically examines the pitfalls of “diversity” and “inclusion” rhetoric in organizations, while arguing for organizations to adapt a culture of transformation which promotes equity and justice.

National Equity Project and Standford D.School: Liberatory Design Card Deck. This collaboration between higher education and non-profit powerhouses has led to a toolkit every educator should keep in reach! In particular, be sure to check out the 3rd section: “Liberatory Design ‘Do Now’s” to learn how you can get started right away in designing for liberation. Suggestions include easy steps such as shadowing a student, having lunch with a teacher, or riding the bus. Each suggestion comes with explanations for why the idea can inform your perspective and how to implement the idea. Share widely for your equity-minded educator friends.

Salt Lake City School District: Equity Glossary: The name speaks for itself! This district glossary comes from the Educational Equity Department and includes 18 commonly used words related to educational equity. But this resource goes one step further than most: it identifies terms commonly used that can actually be harmful or regressive, such as “colorblindness.” Read through the whole list to see how Salt Lake City is clarifying, and elevating language of inclusivity and justice in their community.